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Maoist Internationalist Movement

University of Colorado's Marianne Wesson:

Wesson's literary agent has CIA ties

May 27 2007

Marianne Wesson is the chair of the committee charging Ward Churchill with research misconduct at the University of Colorado. She is also facing research misconduct charges herself. An investigation of her web page shows that her literary agent is the Marsh Agency, which has several CIA ties. Ward Churchill is a published critic who has done original work on the FBI. Ward Churchill's critics also say he has done original work on the CIA.

Part of the misconduct charges against Wesson is that she did not recognize the ad hominem attack of LaVelle against Ward Churchill and why Churchill might be disinclined to reply to such an attack academically. At MIM's website we do not have a total prohibition of ad hominem attacks, but then again, no one is using MIM's web page for career purposes. LaVelle boasts his attacks on Churchill right on his University of New Mexico web page. In contrast, for example, we have tried to be respectful of both sides in the casino issue facing First Nations. We have yet to say that LaVelle is wrong about the Dawes Act because he is involved in asking for federal or casino money.

MIM has addressed the substance of Wesson's kangaroo court committee elsewhere. Now we start to deal with other questions that Hank Brown could have averted by sensibly returning Ward Churchill to teaching. We emphasize the phrase "start to deal with."

The Marsh Agency boasts several CIA links including perhaps the greatest CIA intellectual project of the Cold War, "Encounter" magazine.

The Marsh Agency owns long-established pro-CIA business, glorifying various operations that are CIA/FBI or military. An example is Marsh's children's writer Derek Landy:

"Who is Skullduggery Pleasant? He's a wise-cracking detective, powerful magician, master of dirty tricks and burglary (in the name of the greater good, of course). As well as ally, protector, and mentor of Stephanie Edgely, a very unusual and darkly talented 12-year-old."(1)
That is from the web page promoting Landy's most recent book. The book ended up selling to HarperCollins, which people know now as publishing ex-CIA Director George Tenet's book. Rights Director of Marsh, Camilla Ferrier also comes from HarperCollins. For that matter, Marianne Wesson has published with HarperCollins. The spymuseum.org(2) lists several HarperCollins titles that broke major ground for the CIA, so obviously HarperCollins finds itself trusted in these matters.

Another typical writer at Marsh is Dee Henderson. His "Uncommon Heroes" series glorifies CIA, Navy SEALs etc. The better the image of CIA etc., the better the sales of such books.

When we go to the Marsh Agency web page, among the handful of clients that Marsh brags about in its "About Us" section to form its image is Alexandra Tolstoy. In fact, there is an intellectual Tolstoy cult at the CIA according to Frances Stonor Saunders:

"American intelligence had long had an interest in Tolstoy as a symbol of 'the concept of individual freedom'. It's connection went back to OSS days, when Ilia Tolstoy, émigré grandson of the famous novelist was an OSS officer. Other members of the Tolstoy family were in regular contact with the Psychological Strategy Board in the early 1950s."(2)
By the way, the Tolstoy serving served in Tibet.

Grandmother Alexandra Tolstoy of the Alexandra Tolstoy that Marsh represents today was the one who founded the Tolstoy Foundation. The Tolstoy Foundation received CIA money.(3) In turn, the Tolstoy Foundation did work with Russians and also bestowed a "humanitarian award" on the Dalai Lama. The Wikipedia has this to say about the Tolstoy Foundation:

"It's original purpose was to help Russian refugees from Europe and Soviet Union. Later the foundation played an important role in helping Soviet displaced persons, dissidents and former Soviet citizens to settle in the West."
We need not rely just on Frances Stonor Saunders, because the Truman Library on the Internet includes the Tolstoy Foundation in the CIA archives.(4)

While the Marsh Agency is representing the young Alexandra Tolstoy, it is also representing the international monarchist leader, young Alexandra Tolstoy's father and CIA's Alexandra Tolstoy's son, Nikolai Tolstoy. He is an an active anti-communist thus fitting the CIA bill perfectly--still.

The Marsh Agency also owns rights to works of PEN, which Saunders spends more than six pages saying was infiltrated by the CIA. Salman Rushdie is an example of someone who runs American PEN. He was president from 2004 to 2006. He also spoke in Boulder a few times, including in 1992 when he came out of hiding. We won't associate all PEN writers with this remark, but Salman Rushdie had this to say about 9/11, so we can guess what he thought of "Some People Push Back."

"'We're all living under a fatwa now,' Salman Rushdie sighs, listing his persecutors' long slew of victims, from Algerian novelists to Bali clubbers to Circle Line commuters. 'You can see the fatwa as the overture to 9/11. It's not a direct line. Maybe you could say it was not the same piece of music. But in some way it was a harbinger - a small thing before a big thing. The first crow, you know, flying across the sky.'"
That's quite a different view than that of Ward Churchill and Ron Paul, who would have kept us out of the Iraq War.

The Marsh Agency owns the rights to Richard Wollheim's estate. Some would say Wollheim broke with the CIA after it became public that it ran "Encounter." But Wollheim published "Art and Marxism" in Encounter in 1955 and "Babylon, Babylone" in 1962, two of at least ten articles he did in the CIA publication. Talk of forming another publication with another CIA-aiding intellectual Isiah Berlin never came to anything. Given CIA instruction on how to handle the aftermath of the exposure of "Encounter," unfortunately, Wollheim's objections to the CIA invasion of British cultural life did not amount to much in practice.

Marianne Wesson more or less won an honor from President Reagan to travel to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union as part of the Citizen's Ambassador Program, according to her own vita. Reagan chaired that program.(5) Obviously, Churchill's publications are very anti-government. Wesson chose to enter into a huge ad hominem process against Ward Churchill, as if his views about 9/11 invalidated the rest of his work or as if LaVelle were correct about "wannabe" natives. Inept feds are asking for a huge investigation of Marianne Wesson's conflicts of interest by not telling Hank Brown why to put Churchill back in the classroom.

Hank Brown, it is time to recognize that the show is just getting started. The pro-Churchill side is keeping its powder dry, but look at the revelations that have happened in just the few days that you've had to restore Ward Churchill to teaching. We're in for a show that does not have to happen, but if it does happen, it will be your fault.

Note:
1. http://www.skulduggerypleasant.com/us
2. http://www.spymuseum.org/programs/educate/biblio_recent.php
3. Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (NY: New Press, 1999), pp. 331-2.
4. http://www.trumanlibrary.org/hstpaper/physc.htm
5. http://www.qualityconn.com/our%20story.htm